The 2002 OJC Pressings Can Be Very Good but They Don’t Win Shootouts

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Bill Evans Available Now

For a Hot Stamper pressing we put up recently, we wrote:

Moon Beams is one of the best sounding Bill Evans records we’ve ever played. You can see why we chose it to be the first OJC Hot Stamper of his work to hit the site back in 2015. Play “It Might As Well Be Spring” for the kind of sublime musical experience you only find on 20th century analog recordings.

All of that is true for the best of the 20th century pressings we played. (Which, by the way, does not include any originals as those are consistently inferior to the later pressings we’ve auditioned.)

As for the 21st century, the sound of the best 2002 pressings on OJC are somewhat opaque and dry compared to the best that came before. This is something we rarely point out in the listings we have on sale on the site. You generally have to come to the blog to get a fuller picture of the specific shortcomings we might have of some of our Hot Stamper pressings.

We know both dry sound and opaque sound well, having played hundreds of pressings that suffer from such conditions.

The sound may be decent on most of these 2002 pressings, and fairly good on the best of them, but that’s not really what we were hoping to find. We spent a lot of money and we spent a lot of time, to quote a famous line by a famous rock band, but the six 2002 pressings we cleaned and played nevertheless came up a bit short. That’s just how it goes sometimes. (And sometimes it goes completely off the tracks.)

The way we approach a shootout such as this typically involves playing a copy or two some pressing, the 2002 OJC in this case, and hearing sound good enough to make us think it might have the potential for greatness. As you can see by the marks we gave out, the average copy earned a grade of 1.5+, which is a good, not great Hot Stamper grade.  Greatness was just not in the cards.

Sonny Rollins – Taking Care Of Business (Work Time, Tenor Madness and Tour de Force)

More of the Music of Sonny Rollins

  • With outstanding Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER on all FOUR sides, these vintage Prestige pressings are guaranteed to blow the doors off any other Taking Care Of Business you’ve heard
  • The complete Tenor Madness album is found here, with big, full-bodied, MONO jazz sound at its best, courtesy of the great one, Rudy Van Gelder
  • This is what classic 50s jazz is supposed to sound like – they knew how to do these kinds of records 70+ years ago, and those mastering skills are in short supply nowadays, if not downright extinct
  • The transfers from 1978 by David Turner are in tune with the sound of these recordings – there’s not a trace of phony EQ on this entire record
  • “Tenor Madness was the recording that, once and for all, established Newk as one of the premier tenor saxophonists, an accolade that in retrospect, has continued through six full decades and gives an indication why a young Rollins was so well liked, as his fluency, whimsical nature, and solid construct of melodies and solos gave him the title of the next Coleman Hawkins or Lester Young of mainstream jazz.”

This Two-Fer includes all of Tenor Madness and most of Work Time and Tour De Force.

Top jazz players such as Ray Bryant, John Coltrane, Red Garland, Kenny Drew, Max Roach and Paul Chambers can be heard on the album.

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Remastered, But Why on Earth Would They Bother?

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Supersax Plays Bird is awful music with awful sound.

In 1980 this record single-handedly convinced me that MoFi would lower themselves to remastering records that have little in the way of actual musical value.

UPDATE 2022

I just looked up the mastering engineer credited with cutting the original pressings in 1973, Wally Traugott. Now what are the chances that Stan Ricker cut this record better than Wally Traugott? One in a million? That would be my guess.

Which simply means that the right domestic pressing on Capitol might just be a good sounding record.

But why should anyone care? The music is hopeless.

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Letter of the Week – “Today, sitting at home, I felt like I was at a concert.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Beethoven Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently. (Emphasis added by us.)

Hi Tom,

I finally had a chance to listen to the Super Hot of Beethoven’s 5th I bought from you last month.

Tom, I am feeling really grateful to you. With your guidance, and your records, I have something I simply assumed I could never have – a stereo that can do full justice to orchestral music.

I picked this record, along with Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, as my first foray into full orchestral music on my reworked stereo assembled following your recommendations – Dynavector cartridge, EAR phono stage, Legacy speakers.

Today, sitting at home, I felt like I was at a concert.

This is saying something. I had come to believe this was just not possible. I still remember the sound and the feeling of hearing Beethoven’s 5th performed by the SF Symphony, conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas, about 20 years ago. Seeing it performed for the first time, I was struck by what a small number of musicians the piece calls for. Nobody needed a score, MTT didn’t hold a baton – the whole performance just had a sense of mastery, control, and passion for the music. The sound from that relatively small orchestra was overwhelming. It is this sound I’ve been longing to hear at home. Today, I heard it.

About four years ago I had the opportunity to hear the Berlin Philharmonic play Tchaikovsky’s 5th from a really good seat. Hearing orchestral music performed unamplified in a venue with good acoustics has always led me to believe that it’s not possible to create that on a stereo.

I had come to believe that all stereos distort. When live orchestral music gets loud, it coheres. The sound of a symphony at full volume is just something no stereo or recording can provide. Or so I thought. I figured it was just one of the realities of musical reproduction.

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Paul Desmond – Desmond Blue

More Jazz Recordings Featuring the Saxophone

  • Paul Desmond’s phenomenal 1962 release, here with solid Double Plus (A++) grades on both sides
  • This is vintage Sixties Living Stereo sound at its best – big, rich and Tubey Magical like you will not believe
  • A “highly innovative and meticulously crafted work,” this collection is brimming with delightful jazz classics, including “My Funny Valentine,” “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” and “Body and Soul”
  • 4 stars: “… lush, reflective, thought-provoking, and soul-stirring. This work is quite a plus for any listener and especially those who consider themselves avid fans of Paul Desmond.”

Need a refresher course in Tubey Magic after playing too many modern recordings or remasterings? These original Living Stereo pressings are overflowing with it. Rich, smooth, sweet, full of ambience, dead-on correct tonality — everything that we listen for in a great record is here. (more…)

Foreigner – Double Vision

More of the Music of Foreigner

  • This vintage copy will show you just how good Foreigner’s second album can sound on vinyl, with a KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A++) side one mated to a solid Double Plus (A++) side two
  • If you own the Half-Speed or any modern reissue, you won’t believe how much bigger, clearer and more energetic this pressing is
  • Keith Olsen produced and engineered – he’s the man behind the amazing sound of Buckingham/Nicks and Fleetwood Mac (1975)
  • Marks in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these Classic Rock records – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you
  • 4 stars: “Foreigner promptly followed up its blockbuster debut with the equally successful Double Vision LP in 1978, which featured the FM mega-hits ‘Hot Blooded’ and the driving title track.”
  • If you’re an Arena Rock fan, this title from 1978 is surely a Must Own

As I’m sure you know, there is a Mobile Fidelity Half-Speed Mastered version of this album currently in print, and an older one from the days when their records were pressed in Japan (052).

We haven’t played the latter in years; as I recall it was as lifeless and sucked-out in the midrange as most of the other MoFis of that period, notably The Doors (051) and Trick of the Tail (062). Is there any doubt that the new MoFi will be every bit as bad or worse? If any of our Hot Stamper customers have purchased the current release, I would be interested in hearing how you think it stacks up against this copy. (more…)

In the Court of the Crimson King – An Overview

Hot Stamper Pressings of Progressive Rock Albums Available Now

If you have the Atlantic pressing, from any era, you have not yet begun to hear this record at its best. The better sounding domestic originals we’ve played are clearly mastered from copy tapes, which results in dubby sound.

In the Court of the Crimson King is such a well recorded album that even the sound quality derived from second-generation tapes is still better than most of what came out in 1969.

(By the way, 1969 was a phenomenal year for audiophile quality recordings – as of 2026 we’ve auditioned and reviewed more than one hundred and twenty titles, and there are undoubtedly a great many more that we’ve yet to play. To make it easier for audiophiles to separate the wheat from the chaff, we’ve also identified more than 25 Rock and Pop albums essential to any audiophile record collection worthy of the name.)

Now on to brass tacks.

UK Polydor Label

Passable, not really worth the labor to put them in a shootout just to have them earn sub-Hot Stamper grades. A1/B5 is a common stamper for these pressings and with those stampes the Polydor is not worth the vinyl it’s pressed on.

Pink Label Island

The same can be said for some of the earliest UK Pink Label Island pressings. None of them has ever won a shootout and probably none of them ever will. (A number of Pink Label Island pressings that never win shootouts can be found here.)

The conventional wisdom which holds that original pressings are superior to reissues in this case turns out to be flat wrong.

The Pink Label pressings can be good, but we rarely buy them, our two best reasons being:

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Billy Joel – The Stranger

More of the Music of Billy Joel

  • This vintage pressing of Joel’s 1977 breakthrough album (thanks, Phil!) is doing most right, with both sides earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades or close to them
  • Tonally correct, solid, open, clear, with plenty of hard-rockin’ energy and present vocals (particularly on side two), what’s not to like?
  • “The Stranger,” “Only the Good Die Young,” “Vienna,” “Just The Way You Are,” “Movin’ Out,” “She’s Always A Woman” – some of Joel’s strongest songwriting can be found right here
  • We are especially big fans of the songs “Vienna,” a top track that often flies under the radar in body of work
  • 4 1/2 stars: “None of his ballads have been as sweet or slick as ‘Just the Way You Are’; he never had created a rocker as bouncy or infectious as ‘Only the Good Die Young’; and the glossy production of ‘She’s Always a Woman’ disguises its latent misogynist streak… Joel rarely wrote a set of songs better than those on The Stranger, nor did he often deliver an album as consistently listenable.”

We recently completed a shootout for the album and this was one of the better copies we heard. After playing a stack of mediocre Strangers, we are completely confident in saying that you’ll have a very hard time finding a copy that sounds this good.

The Stranger is chock full of some of Joel’s biggest hits, including Just The Way You Are, Movin’ Out, Scenes From An Italian Restaurant, Only The Good Die Young and She’s Always A Woman. AMG raves about this one (4 1/2 stars) and it’s easy to see why — this is the kind of pop music that still sounds fresh 40 years (!) after it was recorded and might just be good for another forty years. (more…)

Gilbert and Sullivan – Overtures / Ward

More Recordings in Living Stereo

  • You’ll find INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them on both sides of this vintage Shaded Dog pressing of Gilbert and Sullivan’s music
  • It’s also fairly quiet at Mint Minus Minus, a grade that even our most well-cared-for vintage classical titles have trouble playing at
  • Rich and sweet Living Stereo sound from the first note to the last – who can resist these sublime orchestral arrangements?
  • The Overtures are played to perfection – for music and sound, this one is hard to fault, a Top Title in every way and one that belongs in every right-thinking audiophile’s collection
  • This pressing is clearly a Demo Disc for orchestral size and space

The hall is HUGE: spacious and open as any you will hear, but not at the expense of richness or fullness. The orchestra is solid and full-bodied, yet the woodwinds and flutes soar above the other sections, so breathy and clear.

How did the Decca (recording) and RCA (mastering) engineers succeed so brilliantly where so many others have failed, failed right up to this very day?

Who knows? It’s still a mystery that has yet to be explained, to our satisfaction anyway.

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Arnold – Guitar Concertos / Bream

More Living Stereo Recordings

  • Amazing sound throughout this original Shaded Dog pressing, with both sides earning INSANELY GOOD Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades
  • It’s also fairly quiet at Mint Minus Minus, a grade that even our most well-cared-for vintage classical titles have trouble playing at
  • These sides are wonderfully full-bodied, rich and present, using state-of-the-art All Tube Living Stereo recording technology that was so advanced in 1961 it thought it could transport a living, breathing Julian Bream directly from his studio into your listening room
  • It turns out that with today’s playback systems and cleaning technologies, the dream of being in the “living presence” of the performers has become a reality
  • Bream’s guitar sounds sweetly natural, not overly detailed and the orchestra is exceptionally well recorded, as we would expect from a good RCA of this period

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